The Essential Noir Bundle, page 86
Jorgensen brought in his cocktails, and Mimi insisted on being told about the shooting. I told her, making it even more meaningless than it had been. “But why should he have come to you?” she asked.
“God knows. I’d like to know. The police’d like to know.”
Gilbert said: “I read somewhere that when habitual criminals are accused of things they didn’t do—even little things—they’re much more upset by it than other people would be. Do you think that’s so, Mr. Charles?”
“It’s likely.”
“Except,” Gilbert added, “when it’s something big, you know, something they would like to’ve done.” I said again it was likely.
Mimi said: “Don’t be polite to Gil if he starts talking nonsense, Nick. His head’s so cluttered up with reading. Get us another cocktail, darling.” He went over to get the shaker. Nora and Jorgensen were in a corner sorting phonograph records.
I said: “I had a wire from Wynant today.”
Mimi looked warily around the room, then leaned forward, and her voice was almost a whisper: “What did he say?”
“Wanted me to find out who killed her. It was sent from Philadelphia this afternoon.”
She was breathing heavily. “Are you going to do it?”
I shrugged. “I turned it over to the police.” Gilbert came back with the shaker. Jorgensen and Nora had put Bach’s “Little Fugue” on the phonograph. Mimi quickly drank her cocktail and had Gilbert pour her another.
He sat down and said: “I want to ask you: can you tell dope-addicts by looking at them?” He was trembling.
“Very seldom. Why?”
“I was wondering. Even if they’re confirmed addicts?”
“The further along they are, the better the chances of noticing that something’s wrong, but you can’t often be sure it’s dope.”
“Another thing,” he said, “Gross says when you’re stabbed you only feel a sort of push at the time and it’s not until afterwards that it begins to hurt. Is that so?”
“Yes, if you’re stabbed reasonably hard with a reasonably sharp knife. A bullet’s the same way: you only feel the blow—and with a small-calibre steel-jacketed bullet not much of that—at first. The rest comes when the air gets to it.”
Mimi drank her third cocktail and said: “I think you’re both being indecently gruesome, especially after what happened to Nick today. Do try to find Dorry, Gil. You must know some of her friends. Phone them. I suppose she’ll be along presently, but I worry about her.”
“She’s over at our place,” I said.
“At your place?” Her surprise may have been genuine.
“She came over this afternoon and asked if she could stay with us awhile.”
She smiled tolerantly and shook her head. “These youngsters!” She stopped smiling. “Awhile?” I nodded. Gilbert, apparently waiting to ask me another question, showed no interest in this conversation between his mother and me.
Mimi smiled again and said: “I’m sorry she’s bothering you and your wife, but it’s a relief to know she’s there instead of off the Lord only knows where. She’ll have finished her pouting by the time you get back. Send her along home, will you?” She poured me a cocktail. “You’ve been awfully nice to her.” I did not say anything.
Gilbert began: “Mr. Charles, do criminals—I mean professional criminals—usually—”
“Don’t interrupt, Gil,” Mimi said. “You will send her along home, won’t you?” She was pleasant, but she was Dorothy’s Queen of France.
“She can stay if she wants. Nora likes her.”
She shook a crooked finger at me. “But I won’t have you spoiling her like that. I suppose she told you all sorts of nonsense about me.”
“She did say something about a beating.”
“There you are,” Mimi said complacently, as if that proved her point. “No, you’ll have to send her home, Nick.” I finished my cocktail. “Well?” she asked.
“She can stay with us if she wants, Mimi. We like having her.”
“That’s ridiculous. Her place is at home. I want her here.” Her voice was a little sharp. “She’s only a baby. You shouldn’t encourage her foolish notions.”
“I’m not doing anything. If she wants to stay, she stays.”
Anger was a very pretty thing in Mimi’s blue eyes. “She’s my child and she’s a minor. You’ve been very kind to her, but this isn’t being kind to her or to me, and I won’t have it. If you won’t send her home, I’ll take steps to bring her home. I’d rather not be disagreeable about it, but”—she leaned forward and deliberately spaced her words—“she’s coming home.”
I said: “You don’t want to pick a fight with me, Mimi.”
She looked at me as if she were going to say I love you, and asked: “Is that a threat?”
“All right,” I said, “have me arrested for kidnapping, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and mopery.”
She said suddenly in a harsh enraged voice: “And tell your wife to stop pawing my husband.” Nora, looking for another phonograph record with Jorgensen, had a hand on his sleeve. They turned to look at Mimi in surprise.
I said: “Nora, Mrs. Jorgensen wants you to keep you hands off Mr. Jorgensen.”
“I’m awfully sorry.” Nora smiled at Mimi, then looked at me, put a very artificial expression of concern on her face, and in a somewhat singsong voice, as if she were a schoolchild reciting a piece, said: “Oh, Nick, you’re pale. I’m sure you have exceeded your strength and will have a relapse. I’m sorry, Mrs. Jorgensen, but I think I should get him home and to bed right away. You will forgive us, won’t you?” Mimi said she would. Everybody was the soul of politeness to everybody else. We went downstairs and got a taxicab.
“Well,” Nora said, “so you talked yourself out of a dinner. What do you want to do now? Go home and eat with Dorothy?”
I shook my head. “I can do without Wynants for a little while. Let’s go to Max’s: I’d like some snails.”
“Right. Did you find out anything?”
“Nothing.”
She said meditatively: “It’s a shame that guy’s so handsome.”
“What’s he like?”
“Just a big doll. It’s a shame.” We had dinner and went back to the Normandie. Dorothy was not there. I felt as if I had expected that. Nora went through the rooms, called up the desk. No note, no message had been left for us. “So what?” she asked.
It was not quite ten o’clock. “Maybe nothing,” I said.
“Maybe anything. My guess is she’ll show up about three in the morning, tight, with a machine-gun she bought in Childs’.”
Nora said: “To hell with her. Get into pyjamas and lie down.”
CHAPTER 11
My side felt a lot better when Nora called me at noon the next day. “My nice policeman wants to see you,” she said. “How do you feel?”
“Terrible. I must’ve gone to bed sober.” I pushed Asta out of the way and got up.
Guild rose with a drink in his hand when I entered the living-room, and smiled all across his broad sandy face. “Well, well, Mr. Charles, you look spry enough this morning.” I shook hands with him and said yes I felt pretty good, and we sat down. He frowned good-naturedly. “Just the same, you oughtn’t’ve played that trick on me.”
“Trick?”
“Sure, running off to see people when I’d put off asking you questions to give you a chance to rest up. I kind of figured that ought to give me first call on you, as you might say.”
“I didn’t think,” I said. “I’m sorry. See that wire I got from Wynant?”
“Uh-huh. We’re running it out in Philly.”
“Now about that gun,” I began, “I—”
He stopped me. “What gun? That ain’t a gun any more. The firing pin’s busted off, the guts are rusted and jammed. If anybody’s fired it in six months—or could—I’m the Pope of Rome. Don’t let’s waste any time talking about that piece of junk.”
I laughed. “That explains a lot. I took it away from a drunk who said he’d bought it in a speakeasy for twelve bucks. I believe him now.”
“Somebody’ll sell him the City Hall one of these days. Man to man, Mr. Charles, are you working on the Wolf job or ain’t you?”
“You saw the wire from Wynant.”
“I did. Then you ain’t working for him. I’m still asking you.”
“I’m not a private detective any more. I’m not any kind of detective.”
“I heard that. I’m still asking you.”
“All right. No.”
He thought for a moment, said: “Then let me put it another way: are you interested in the job?”
“I know the people, naturally I’m interested.”
“And that’s all?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t expect to be working on it?”
The telephone rang and Nora went to answer it.
“To be honest with you, I don’t know. If people keep on pushing me into it, I don’t know how far they’ll carry me.”
Guild wagged his head up and down. “I can see that. I don’t mind telling you I’d like to have you in on it—on the right side.”
“You mean not on Wynant’s side. Did he do it?”
“That I couldn’t say, Mr. Charles, but I don’t have to tell you he ain’t helping us any to find out who did it.”
Nora appeared in the doorway. “Telephone, Nick.”
Herbert Macaulay was on the wire. “Hello, Charles. How’s the wounded?”
“I’m all right, thanks.”
“Did you hear from Wynant?”
“Yes.”
“I got a letter from him saying he had wired you. Are you too sick to—”
“No, I’m up and around. If you’ll be in your office late this afternoon I’ll drop in.”
“Swell,” he said. “I’ll be here till six.”
I returned to the living-room. Nora was inviting Guild to have lunch while we had breakfast. He said it was mighty kind of her. I said I ought to have a drink before breakfast. Nora went to order meals and pour drinks. Guild shook his head and said: “She’s a mighty fine woman, Mr. Charles.” I nodded solemnly.
He said: “Suppose you should get pushed into this thing, as you say, I’d like it a lot more to feel you were working with us than against us.”
“So would I.”
“That’s a bargain then,” he said. He hunched his chair around a little. “I don’t guess you remember me, but back when you were working this town I was walking beat on Forty-second Street.”
“Of course,” I said, lying politely. “I knew there was something familiar about—Being out of uniform makes a difference.”
“I guess it does. I’d like to be able to take it as a fact that you’re not holding out anything we don’t already know.”
“I don’t mean to. I don’t know what you know. I don’t know very much. I haven’t seen Macaulay since the murder and I haven’t even been following it in the newspapers.” The telephone was ringing again. Nora gave us our drinks and went to answer it.
“What we know ain’t much of a secret,” Guild said, “and if you want to take the time to listen I don’t mind giving it to you.” He tasted his drink and nodded approvingly. “Only there’s a thing I’d like to ask first. When you went to Mrs. Jorgensen’s last night, did you tell her about getting the telegram from him?”
“Yes, and I told her I’d turned it over to you.”
“What’d she say?”
“Nothing. She asked questions. She’s trying to find him.”
He put his head a little to one side and partly closed one eye. “You don’t think there’s any chance of them being in cahoots, do you?” He held up a hand. “Understand I don’t know why they would be or what it’d be all about if they were, but I’m just asking.”
“Anything’s possible,” I said, “but I’d say it was pretty safe they aren’t working together. Why?”
“I guess you’re right.” Then he added vaguely: “But there’s a couple of points.” He sighed. “There always is. Well, Mr. Charles, here’s just about all we know for certain and if you give us a little something more here and there as we go along I’ll be mighty thankful to you.” I said something about doing my best.
“Well, along about the 3rd of last October Wynant tells Macaulay he’s got to leave town for a while. He don’t tell Macaulay where he’s going or what for, but Macaulay gets the idea that he’s off to work on some invention or other that he wants to keep quiet—and he gets it out of Julia Wolf later that he’s right—and he guesses Wynant’s gone off to hide somewhere in the Adirondacks, but when he asks her about that later she says she don’t know any more about it than he does.”
“She know what the invention was?”
Guild shook his head. “Not according to Macaulay, only that it was probably something that he needed room for and machinery or things that cost money, because that’s what he was fixing up with Macaulay. He was fixing it so Macaulay could get hold of his stocks and bonds and other things he owned and turn ’em into money when he wanted it and take care of his banking and everything just like Wynant himself.”
“Power of attorney covering everything, huh?”
“Exactly. And listen, when he wanted money, he wanted it in cash.”
“He was always full of screwy notions,” I said.
“That’s what everybody says. The idea seems to be he don’t want to take any chances on anybody tracing him through checks, or anybody up there knowing he’s Wynant. That’s why he didn’t take the girl along with him—didn’t even let her know where he was, if she was telling the truth—and let his whiskers grow.” With his left hand he stroked an imaginary beard.
“ ‘Up there,” ’ I quoted. “So he was in the Adirondacks?”
Guild moved one shoulder. “I just said that because that and Philadelphia are the only ideas anybody’s give us. We’re trying the mountains, but we don’t know. Maybe Australia.”
“And how much of this money in cash did Wynant want?”
“I can tell you that exactly.” He took a wad of soiled, bent and dog-eared papers out of his pocket, selected an envelope that was a shade dirtier than most of the others, and stuffed the others back in his pocket. “The day after he talked to Macaulay he drew five thousand out of the bank himself, in cash. On the 28th—this is October, you understand—he had Macaulay get another five for him, and twenty-five hundred on the 6th of November, and a thousand on the 15th, and seventy-five hundred on the 30th, and fifteen hundred on the 6th—that would be December—and a thousand on the 18th, and five thousand on the 22nd, which was the day before she was killed.”
“Nearly thirty thou,” I said. “A nice bank balance he had.”
“Twenty-eight thousand five hundred, to be exact.” Guild returned the envelope to his pocket. “But you understand it wasn’t all in there. After the first call Macaulay would sell something every time to raise the dough.” He felt in his pocket again. “I got a list of the stuff he sold, if you want to see it.”
I said I didn’t. “How’d he turn the money over to Wynant?”
“Wynant would write the girl when he wanted it, and she’d get it from Macaulay. He’s got her receipts.”
“And how’d she get it to Wynant?”
Guild shook his head. “She told Macaulay she used to meet him places he told her, but he thinks she knew where he was, though she always said she didn’t.”
“And maybe she still had the last five thousand on her when she was killed, huh?”
“Which might make it robbery, unless”—Guild’s watery gray eyes were almost shut—“he killed her when he came there to get it.”
“Or unless,” I suggested, “somebody else who killed her for some other reason found the money there and thought they might as well take it along.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “Things like that happen all the time. It even happens sometimes that the first people that find a body like that pick up a little something before they turn in the alarm.” He held up a big hand. “Of course, with Mrs. Jorgensen—a lady like that—I hope you don’t think I’m—”
“Besides,” I said, “she wasn’t alone, was she?”
“For a little while. The phone in the apartment was out of whack, and the elevator boy rode the superintendent down to phone from the office. But get me right on this, I’m not saying Mrs. Jorgensen did anything funny. A lady like that wouldn’t be likely—”
“What was the matter with the phone?” I asked.
The doorbell rang. “Well,” Guild said, “I don’t know just what to make of it. The phone had—” He broke off as a waiter came in and began to set a table. “About the phone,” Guild said when we were sitting at the table, “I don’t know just what to make of it, as I said. It had a bullet right smack through the mouthpiece of it.”
“Accidental or—?”
“I’d just as lief ask you. It was from the same gun as the four that hit her, of course, but whether he missed her with that one or did it on purpose I don’t know. It seems like a kind of noisy way to put a phone on the bum.”
“That reminds me,” I said, “didn’t anybody hear all this shooting? A .32’s not a shotgun, but somebody ought to’ve heard it.”
“Sure,” he said disgustedly. “The place is lousy with people that think they heard things now, but nobody did anything about it then, and God knows they don’t get together much on what they think they heard.”
“It’s always like that,” I said sympathetically.
“Don’t I know it.” He put a forkful of food in his mouth.
“Where was I? Oh, yes, about Wynant. He gave up his apartment when he went away, and put his stuff in storage. We been looking through it—the stuff—but ain’t found anything yet to show where he went or even what he was working on, which we thought maybe might help. We didn’t have any better luck in his shop on First Avenue. It’s been locked up too since he went away, except that she used to go down there for an hour or two once or twice a week to take care of his mail and things. There’s nothing to tell us anything in the mail that’s come since she got knocked off. We didn’t find anything in her place to help.” He smiled at Nora. “I guess this must be pretty dull to you, Mrs. Charles.”
